The Bible does not make sense…until it does.

 

A radical following of Jesus began some 2000 years ago, after He was gone, by people who had no credibility to do it…

 

  • One of His first public acts was to CALL OUT everyone in the temple who had any power at all.  He swung a whip around and put a group of men on the run…
  • He had no issue talking to people who the Jews thought were heathens—right in front of them.  He cared nothing of how He looked or what it looked like to others.
  • He was deemed unclean because He touched sick people without hesitation or remorse.
  • He was OF THE JEWS…and yet He had no issue whatsoever breaking customs that made Him look like a law-breaking radical.  But NO ONE has ever lived who has followed the law so perfectly.
  • He had heart to heart connections with the most diverse group of friends you could draw up.  He met up with and connected with people who radically hated each other:
    • Simon the Zealot (who probably killed Roman Soldiers) AND a Roman Centurion.
    • A tax collector Matthew and the people who hated tax collectors.
    • The woman He met at the well was not even welcomed in her own town in broad daylight….yet after meeting Him she converted the entire town.
  • He was discovered missing by two women (not legal testimony at that time).

 

None of this makes any sense….and yet it is the very proof of our gospel!!

 

Everything He said…He did.

Everything He preached…came to be.

Everyone He touched…became transformed.

 

I am in awe of this story, and this Man, who I call Lord…and though I know Him in the Spirit—I wonder what it would be like to have Him around today.

He would throw hay bales with a rancher and clean a toilet with a custodian.

He’d train with a Navy Seal and march at a peace rally.

He’d cry with an infant and fight with an army.

He’d cry out on the importance of marriage yet stand with a divorcee.

He would defend life and yet minister to a woman in pain over losing her child.

He’d influence a judge and stand on a jury.

He would talk to a radical muslim, a hindu, an atheist.

He would connect with a man in prison while ministering to a prison guard.

He would cure a cancer patient yet die with someone who was terminally ill.

He would submit to the mayor of a small town yet call out a king.

He would sleep on the ground beside a homeless man yet minister to the richest man in the city.

 

There would be no cultural lines in His mind.

Politics would mean nothing to Him.

He would be as rich as He needed to be without money.

He would have no issue standing up to a bully.

 

And that’s just it.  Nothing He does or leads us to do makes sense…..

 

Even after He was gone He made no sense…..

 

He saves and delivers Paul—-the most educated Jewish man on the planet….and yet He sends Paul to minister to the non-Jews and sends Peter, who the Jews do not respect, to bring the gospel to them.  Why in the world would He do that?

 

Because while He will come meet us where we are at……we have things ingrained in our heads that are utterly false and ungodly.  Our cultures and traditions and thought processes and mindsets are, at their very core, WRONG……

 

He even tells us, in Jeremiah 17, that “our heart is, above all things, deceitful”.

 

Without Him coming in and changing us all the way….we aren’t changed at all.

 

And He warns us, through Paul, about how weak we can truly be:

Colossians 2:8  See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

 

This is not a warning to people who do not know Him….it is a warning to people who DO KNOW Him.

 

In the word there are many verses that strike me as God punishing people who don’t seem to have done anything too wrong…..but my pastor said something last week that stuck with me from the moment he said it:

“Doing almost all of it is doing none of it.”

 

That resonated with me all week.  So many times I do “almost all of it”….

 

Where do we go with this word I give you today?

 

As I sit here writing this….I am wondering this very thing…but the answer is simple:

 

We go to Jesus.

 

Because without Him emptying us out from ourselves…we are utterly helpless.

 

He is

The food that sustains us

The air that we breathe

The legs that make us walk

The fingers that tie our shoes

The hope in our hearts

The hope we have for today…AND the hope we have for eternity

 

So as you walk through today….take every thought you have, every emotion you feel, every mindset you carry, and take it captive…..because Jesus came to save us, first, from the very thing that can put us in captivity—OURSELVES.

 

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

 

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Coach J